The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, writes Douglas Anderson in his preface, is "no one's contemporary... Blending elements of the fifteenth-century spiritual discipline of Thomas à Kempis with the journalistic energy of Daniel Defoe, the urbane reason of Lord Shaftesbury with the scientific initiative of Thomas Edison, Franklin places exceptional demands on the historical imagination of his readers—demands that are inevitably slighted by writers who emphasize only one set of interests or one facet of a complex temperament."

In The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin Anderson takes a fresh look at the intellectual roots of one of the most engaging and multifaceted of America's founders. Anderson begins by tracing the evolution of young Franklin's theology of works between the letters of Silence Dogood (1722) and his impassioned defense of the heterodox Irish clergyman Samuel Hemphill in 1735. He places the twenty-five-year production of Poor Richard's Almanac in the context of early eighteenth-century moral and educational psychology. He examines the broad intellectual continuities uniting Franklin's 1726 journal of his return voyage to Philadelphia with successive editions of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity, first published in 1751. And he offers a careful examination of Franklin's seminal, and controversial, 1751 essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind."

The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin brings us a much fuller understanding of Franklin's intellectual and literary roots and his later influence among common readers.

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Benjamin Franklin, writes Douglas Anderson in his preface, is "no one's contemporary... Blending elements of the fifteenth-century spiritual discipline of Thomas à Kempis with the journalistic energy of Daniel Defoe, the urbane reason of Lord Shaftesbury with the scientific initiative of Thomas Edison, Franklin places exceptional demands on the historical imagination of his readers — demands that are inevitably slighted by writers who emphasize only one set of interests or one facet of a complex temperament."

In The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin Anderson takes a fresh look at the intellectual roots of one of the most engaging and multifaceted of America's founders. Anderson begins by tracing the evolution of young Franklin's theology of works between the letters of Silence Dogood (1722) and his impassioned defense of the heterodox Irish clergyman Samuel Hemphill in 1735. He places the twenty-five-year production of Poor Richard's Almanac in the context of early eighteenth-century moral and educational psychology. He examines the broad intellectual continuities uniting Franklin's 1726 journal of his return voyage to Philadelphia with successive editions of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity, first published in 1751. And he offers a careful examination of Franklin's seminal, and controversial, 1751 essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind."

The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin brings us a much fuller understanding of Franklin's intellectual and literary roots and his later influence among common readers.

Library Journal

As a writer, politician, diplomat, printer, philanthropist, scientist, and inventor, Franklin has been a figure of endless fascination for generations. In this intellectual biography, Anderson (English, Univ. of Georgia) provides the literary context for many of Franklin's writings, including the Silence Dogwood letters, Poor Richard's Almanac, and his 1751 essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind." Anderson also offers imaginative and sometimes speculative readings of Franklin's own works. The list of literary influences on Franklin is long-Anderson discusses Shaftesbury, Addison, Hutcheson, Locke, and Mandeville, among others. Certainly, those interested in the history of reading, early America, intellectual history, and Franklin himself would enjoy and profit from this engaging book.-David B. Mattern, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville

Douglas Anderson is associate professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is the author of A House Undivided: Domesticity and Community in American Literature. New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History